Ag Outlook: Brazil is looking at largest soybean crop ever

Jan 31, 2023

Global economics and the impact for agriculture were a key focus during the Annual Ag Outlook yesterday.

Brad Magnusson, CEO of Magnusson Consulting Group covered a lot of ground from oil and gas prices to the war in Ukraine, and more.

A key area of interest is the potential impact of an increase in U.S. acres.

He says the USDA is expecting to see an increase in soybeans, winter wheat and spring wheat, with corn acres jumping 1.9 million acres.

"Now what impact is that having? Well, first of all, we're starting to see fertilizers slide in the form of nitrogen. I think a lot of us including ourselves, bought expensive nitrogen in and around $1100 in the fall. It's down to around about $910 yesterday ( Monday )."

He notes the biggest problem that a lot of fertilizer companies are having right now is delivery issues adding that he anticipates fertilizer prices will come back up as the demand increases.

Another key area to watch is Brazil, where they have a very, very large bean crop that could see production hit 154 or 159.1 million tonnes making it their largest soybean crop ever.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.